Kudos to our own Chip Nilges

George is in the UK, Alice is attending a conference as 'spouse of Val' and I have been in and out....these are the excuses anyway, for not noting any earlier that our esteemed OCLC colleague and pal Chip Nilges has been named one of the 50 or so "Movers and Shakers" of 2005 by Library Journal. He is honored as one of the "Change Agents", a title that definitely suits him, and which most recently refers to his efforts bringing library metadata to the web with the Open Worldcat program.

LJ said of Chip and his fellow Change Agents: "Their actions—large and small—have an impact on people. Open a building at seven a.m. and the library becomes a part of commuters’ lives. Challenge library students to think about race and the next generation of librarians will provide better service. Make a deal with Google and library content is suddenly visible."

Chip is quoted as saying: "We must always begin with what the user wants and work backward from there." Amen, Brother Nilges.

The only quibble I have with Chip is that he still hasn't been skiing in western Canada despite my PR work of years about great snow, short lift lines, favourable exchange rate and Canadian beer.